Last week, I talked about the fact that we might have reached “peak drone,” the idea that public interest in drones and quadcopters is waning. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a use for them. I feel like over the past few months, there’s actually been more “useful” articles about drones, rather than the fun and gimmicky ones like the burrito delivery drone. Anyways, time will tell. Here are this week’s round-up of drone-related news stories:

Apparently France is accusing rival soccer teams of using a drone to spy on them at their training camp in Brazil for the World Cup. However, it is still unclear if it’s actual spying that’s happening or, as the article says, an enthusiastic fan. The former is definitely a more interesting news story, but the latter much more likely.

Maybe you’ll be able to see video of that training footage on TravelByDrone, a site that aims to give you a drone-based view of the world in the same way Google StreetView gave you a car-based view. The site’s team is manually vetting and adding new drone videos to their site at a few hundred a day, according to TechCrunch.

Firstly, have we reached Peak Drone? I plugged the word “drone” into Google trends, and it spat out the following chart (along with a bit of a forecast). It’s not necessarily the best indicator in the topic, but it looks public interest in drones peaked a few months ago, in December 2013. Either that, or they’re becoming so commonplace that people don’t need to search for them anymore.

"Drone" via Google Trends

Next up is a cyberpunk-ish video by M.I.A. feature not only drones, but also 3D-printed guns and a glitchy vibe. The whole thing feels like a 90s dream of what the future should have been, but it’s still pretty cool. Watch it here.

For the last few years, advertisers have known that those watching their ads are likely to have a second screen nearby, whether it’s a laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

What’s interesting to me is that game developers are starting to take notice of this. The Wii-U was the first instance a “second screen” experience for gamers, but more interesting to me are the companion apps that are closely tied to a few of the big games that have come out recently or are hotly anticipated. Check out my round-up of these below:

Tom Clancy’s The Division – I’m pretty excited for this dystopian police game, but even more excited for what the companion app will do. According to IGN, your friends will be able to join you via their iPhone or iPad to control a drone in the game, pointing out snipers or laying down cover fire.

Destiny – As excited as I am for The Division, I’m probably more excited about Destiny. How can the former Halo developers go wrong? Unfortunately, their companion app (dubbed “Companion“) doesn’t sound nearly as interesting, and is nothing more than a tool for keeping track of your stats and maybe updating your loadout.

Titanfall – The Titanfall companion app sits in the middle of a few of these, and offers you an interactive mini-map of the current game. It’s not groundbreaking, but an interesting add-on to what is supposed to be an amazing game.

“Human beings are scary. We breathe a corrosive gas, drink one of the most potent solvents. Our preferred method of hunting was persistence hunting, where we chased animals until their body simply gave up and died. We can eat just about anything we find, which means that we don’t need to stop for food when chasing our prey. If we can’t find food, that’s fine. Our body will simply begin to eat itself so that we don’t have to stop chasing our prey. We walk upright, we sweat, we don’t have much body hair, which allows us to radiate away our body heat. This means that excessive time or extreme environment wont stop our hunts. If the animal fights back against us, we can take massive damage to our extremities and lose half our blood and still live. Our entire existence is owed to persistence, endurance, and determination. When we put ourselves to a task, it gets done, period. And this instinct is still affecting us today. 332BC: Alexander the Great hits a stalemate with the fortified island city of Tyre. Instead of going back defeated, he builds a kilometer long bridge in order to raze the city. 49BC: Cesar, after defeating the Gauls and invading Britain, turns a political fight into a civil war by invading Italy with only a single legion. He eventually becomes dictator starting a world superpower whose engineering feats are only recently being broken. 1804AD: A charismatic French general declares himself Emperor and sets off to conquer much of mainland Europe. He is captured, exiled, and then escapes. The soldiers sent to recapture him instead lay down their arms and join him. 1961AD: One man decides that we will go to the moon, despite much of the technology to do so not even existing yet. Just eight years later, two humans stand on the surface of the moon and look back upon the Earth. 200 years ago, we didn’t have railroads. 100 years ago, we didn’t have airplanes. 50 years ago, we didn’t have spaceflight. 25 years ago we didn’t have the Internet. We’ve already inherited the Earth and soon we WILL inherit the stars and anyone or anything that stands in our way will be eliminated one way or another.”

I got a pretty hilarious email from Betabrand who wrote in to tell me that they saw the best results when their social media content included a close-up of a male crotch clothed in Betabrand products. I’m not sure it will work for everyone company, but the numbers don’t lie (see the charts bel0w), and it’s an interesting way for a company’s creative to be so heavily driven by their clicks and web traffic.

I’ve been a bit busy lately, and haven’t had time to do my weekly wrap-ups of drones in the news but here goes:

Apparently some chaps at the Imperial College London have created a drone that works as a 3D printer, in that it sprays out a foam-like substance as it flies and can build things. It’s supposed to mimic the way that swifts (a type of bird) build their nests, and the researchers say it can be used to repair areas inaccessible to humans, like wind-turbines.

And while it’s not really a “drone”, a company in Florida has created a little running robot called the “Outrunner” than reach speeds of 20mph. It seems to be an early version, so it will be interesting to see what else they can do with it and if it will have any uses.,

I think I might have missed one of my weekly recaps of drone and quadcopter news, but that’s because I’ve been doing a bit of travelling lately.

Up first is the story of an apparently hacked drone crashing and injuring a triathlete in Australia. The story has made the rounds across a number of different publications, but I first read about it on Kotaku. What I liked is one of the first comments on that article:

Nope. This guy is a complete jackoff. Either he’s flat-out lying, or he was grossly negligent and incompetent… In either case, fuck him.

First of all, let’s start with the airframe. It’s a $20 Chinese knockoff of a DJI Flamewheel hexacopter, that he no doubt purchased from Hobby King. (The fact that it’s not DJI motors or anything else is a good tipoff.) And even a properly-configured $100 Chinese flight controller would’ve RTL’d (Return To Launch; climb to a safe altitude and fly back to the GPS coordinates of where it took off from.) upon loss of control. (Even a $60 one, really.)Nevermind the fact that any RX/TX setup you pay more than $50 for won’t be interfered with that easily. Bottom line is, once again, either he’s flat-out lying and it was operator error, or he was flying a dangerously unfit piece of equipment overhead of people.

Apparently Google is also getting in to the drone game. According to a link that Jason Guitard sent my way. I’m not really sure what to make of this news – in the scale of drone company acquisitions, it’s probably pretty big. In the scale of Google, it’s probably not a big investment on their part. According to the article, they plan on using it to potentially map the earth in more detail and/or to provide quicker internet speeds around the world.

Lastly, the Daily Dot wrote an article about some guy in California who took the first “Drone Selfie”. I’d like to refute that claim, as this Instagram photo from last summer clearly demonstrates that I beat them to it with my Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. You can check out some more photos I took with that drone here.

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